STEP 3: Name Servers

Pointing your domain name to a Domain Name Server (also known as DNS) is the next step to getting your website on the Internet. This is no different than the phone company listing your name and address under the city you live in. Internet routers, scattered all over the world, will route traffic to the Name Server that your domain name has been assigned to. When someone types in www.mycompany.com this domain will have a name server assigned to it, such as ns.nameserver.net. This name acts like a name of a city. Traffic gets routed first to the city and secondly to the specific address of your website within that city. This means that hundreds or thousands of websites could share the same Name Server which will in turn know where to find each website within its domain.

For this to happen, you must first register your domain name with a Name Server, so that when someone types in your domain name such as www.mycompany.com, the Internet checks all the phonebooks (Name Servers) to find who has that name listed. Once it finds the right Name Server it directs that person to the proper web server where www.mycompany.com is located.

For example, when someone types www.mycompany.com into their browser, the request (or call) is transmitted out onto the Internet. All Name Servers ignore the call accept for ns.nameserver.net which recognizes that domain name in its phonebook. After accepting the call, the person's request is directed to the proper web server hosting the www.mycompany.com website and returns the appropriate pages back to their Internet browser completing the call.

How do you point your Domain Name to a Name Server?

Once you have decided on a web host as discussed in Step 2, you will enter your web host's Name Server, and possibly the IP addresses into your Domain Name's Administration Form. This will direct people to that Name Server when they type in your Domain Name.

After registering your Domain Name, the company that registered the name will give you instructions on how make these changes. This is usually done in some type of Administration Form on the Internet that is password protected. If you are unsure of how to do this, just call and ask them. The changes you make are in the Name Servers section. Here you will be asked to enter in the Name Server names and/or IP addresses. For example, it may ask you to enter:

Primary Name Server - ns1.nameserver.com with the IP address of 200.10.220.30

Secondary Name Server - ns2.nameserver.com with the IP address of 200.10.240.50

There are usually 2 or more in case one Name Server is down for maintenance and can not respond to the Internet requests.

Tips

• It can take 24 to 72 hours after the change has been made to point your domain name to new Name Servers. This is because all the computers in the world that look after routing that request, must be updated with the new information. So if someone in Australia wants to see your website, their local routers must have the changes.

• Make sure you give or input the exact information that your Hosting company gave you. If the Name Servers are wrong even by 1 character, it will take another 24 to 72 hours before they update again correctly.

• Pointing your domain name to your own computer is not advisable.

  Technically you could register your domain to point to your own computer if you are using DSL (High Speed) or Cable. Usually this is against the terms of your ISP agreement, however, even if it is not, it is still not a good solution for two major reasons; uptime guarantee and speed. If your ISP or your computer is down, your web site would also be down. Also, the bandwidth data that can pass through the lines from your computer to another on the Internet is too slow for a web server. Most people don't know it, but the uploading of information from your broadband connection is significantly slower than the downloading speed. A web server mostly uploads to computers making requests from a browser.

Cost
No cost unless your Domain Name Registration Company charges for this service. Most companies provide this service as part of the registration cost, if you are willing to manage it yourself.

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